West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Thursday that her government would "temporarily take over" two television channels owned by the scam-tainted Saradha Group amidst howls of protest from the opposition CPI(M).
HT reports.
Basirhaat police have arrested a wife on Friday for allegedly abducting her husband, who has been missing for past three weeks.
The Calcutta high court on Tuesday allowed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to investigate alleged money laundering by the controversial Saradha Group.
After it earned itself a bad name in the Park Street gangrape and Garden Reach shootout cases, Kolkata Police were compensated on Sunday, when Ujjwal Roy, officer-incharge of the Shyampukur police station, scaled the highest peak, Mount Everest, at about 6.35am. Soumen Datta reports.
A division bench of Chief Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Joymalyo Bagchi directed that the panchayat election be held in three phases and that the poll process should be completed till July 15.
In a significant move post the multicrore Saradha Ponzi scam, the CPI(M) expelled Ganesh Dey, the personal assistant of the former state finance minister, Asim Dasgupta, from the preliminary membership of the party for his liaison with the tainted group and keeping the party leadership in the dark. HT reports.
Lora Saalman, a Beijing based expert on India-China relations, feels that the Chinese incursions in eastern Ladakh are more a tactical move by the Chinese army than a larger strategy by its government.
Anirban Choudhury reports.
It’s not just smokers who would have to shell out extra bucks towards the chief minister’s Saradha relief fund, cars and some luxury items may also get a bit costlier to pay for the Rs. 500 crore bill that chit fund money-losers have run up.
Scientists, and not weathermen, have spotted dark clouds over Kolkata. Known as Polar Stratospheric Clouds, these formations comprising mainly of gases and fumes from automobiles, reside at a much higher altitude than ordinary rain-bearing clouds.
The Saradha ponzi scam, that has already claimed a couple of lives in last few days, saw another investor committing suicide late Friday night in Purulia district. Tapan Biswas (36) was found hanging from the ceiling of his house at Balrampur, 50 km from Purulia town. He had deposited Rs. 2 lakh in Saradha and was suffering from depression since the scam broke out.
After Saradha, another financial scam has surfaced in Murshidabad. Hundreds of agents of a Murshidabad-based ponzi company, James Dream India Real Estate Ltd (JDIRL), on Saturday ransacked the house of the company’s managing director after the investors did not get their money back with interest. The managing director is absconding after the incident.
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Saturday expressed hope that chief minister Mamata Banerjee would protect investors and demanded that the Centre should intervene in chit fund irregularities.
Dr Kunal Saha, a US-based medical practitioner, will be contesting the West Bengal Medical Council (WBMC) elections this year. The last council was dissolved around one year back.
A day after the police seized Saradha Group chairman Sudipta Sen’s property and froze his bank accounts for duping thousands of people with his chit-fund money-trap, a PIL was filed in Calcutta high court petitioning the court to order a CBI enquiry into the Saradha Group.
Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri reports.
In about seven years, a small-time builder in the southern fringe of Kolkata became Bengal’s ponzie king with a
Rs. 20,000-crore kitty – that’s the figure being quoted unofficially – to play around with politics, media, construction and lakhs of lives.